Latest / The FEEL Podcast: Women’s Empowerment, Emotional Wellness and Self-Leadership with Melissa Crook / Breaking the Silence: How Callisto Is Empowering Survivors & Preventing Campus Sexual Assault with Tracy DeTomasi

Transcript

Breaking the Silence: How Callisto Is Empowering Survivors & Preventing Campus Sexual Assault with Tracy DeTomasi · The FEEL Podcast: Women’s Empowerment, Emotional Wellness and Self-Leadership with Melissa Crook

0:12
Hello and welcome to the Field podcast this week.
0:15
This is a very special episode. It is part of our Podcast on
0:20
feature this year in 2026. Thanks so much to Podcast On.
0:25
Go to podcastfun.org to check out all of the incredible
0:30
podcast that are featuring nonprofits from around the world
0:34
world this week. You don't want to miss out on
0:36
this opportunity. I first started participating
0:39
with them last year when I featured her Story Writers
0:44
Network, which is a nonprofit I used to work with and I'm very
0:47
passionate about. I got another opportunity this
0:50
year to participate and I knew the minute they reached out to
0:55
me in November who I was going to feature.
0:58
And it's Callisto. And you all, if you've been with
1:02
me, may remember that name. You may have seen me feature
1:06
them on our socials and advocate for them.
1:09
You may remember the episode that I had in the fall, released
1:13
early in our fall season of 2025 with their CEO, Tracy de Tomasi.
1:19
She's back with me today. And I'm going to put the link to
1:23
that episode in the show notes because it's a great episode to
1:27
learn more about her and her story and how she got connected
1:31
to this incredibly important organization.
1:35
But today, we're going to spend this time talking about Callisto
1:40
specifically, why it's important, why it's necessary,
1:44
what's possible through the tools and resources that they
1:49
are providing, how Callisto can stop the next Epstein.
1:54
This doesn't have to be a thing that we have to survive later in
2:00
this world. We can stop these things and
2:03
this nonprofit has the tools, the resources to do that, but we
2:09
need to fund it. We need to let people know about
2:12
it. And so that's what we're going
2:14
to do today. I'm at the time we're recording
2:18
this about a month before it drops on March 10th.
2:22
Epstein files are all over the news, especially if you live in
2:26
the US. But around the world?
2:27
Because as we are learning, powerful people from around the
2:34
world are being shielded while we watch our survivors
2:39
continually be re traumatized. And I told Tracy before we got
2:43
on. I'm so angry this week and I'm
2:50
so thankful for this conversation to highlight
2:54
Calisto because I need to be reminded of the hope that exists
2:58
out there and the possibility that exists.
3:01
And that's what Podcasts on provides and I'm so thankful for
3:04
that. You'll notice I'm dropping this
3:06
on a Tuesday when I normally drop my solo episode, but I'm
3:10
like, Nope. I want the focus to be on this
3:13
organization today and this week.
3:16
And I want you all to go and donate when you're done
3:19
listening. And I want you to let every
3:22
woman, every survivor, man, college campuses across the
3:27
world, let them know this exists.
3:30
I'm very passionate about this. Tracy, thanks so much for coming
3:33
back with me today and recording this.
3:37
I'm going to turn the time over to you and we'll go back and
3:39
forth. But I really want you to share
3:42
how it is that Callisto can stop the next Epstein, how people can
3:48
get engaged with it, the resources.
3:50
There's a whole Project Callisto portion of this.
3:53
I want you to utilize this time, the next 30 minutes or so, to
3:57
share everything you feel like people need to know about this
4:00
impactful, important organization.
4:04
Well, thank you so much, Melissa.
4:05
It's an honor to be back and to be able to be chosen for this
4:09
special episode because we need all of the awareness that that
4:13
we can get, particularly in the US but around the world.
4:16
And so I have the, you know, I have the pleasure of being the
4:20
CEO of Callisto. And to start, we are a tech for
4:25
good nonprofit that has built encrypted technology to help
4:28
survivors of sexual assault find out if their perpetrator has
4:32
harmed somebody else without having to publicly disclose.
4:36
And I'll get into that of like how we do that in just a bit.
4:39
But to kind of answer your question about how do we prevent
4:42
the next Epstein and framing it around all of that.
4:45
So as you know, Jess Michaels is an Epstein survivor from 1991
4:51
and she is also a dear friend of mine.
4:53
And I can share this story with her permission and this
4:56
experience of hers with her permission.
4:58
But one of the things that when she so she was raped by him in
5:02
1991 and in 2018, she saw an article by Julie K Brown, The
5:08
Perversion of Justice, and it was about Epstein's sweetheart
5:11
deal in the early 2000s. And she was scrolling through
5:15
her feed and she saw his picture.
5:16
And she was like, holy cow, that's the man who assaulted me.
5:20
And she was able to prove that with a lot of different records.
5:23
You can go on her socials and find that, find out her story
5:26
from her. But she said that was the day
5:28
she began healing. And now she's connected to so
5:31
many other Epstein survivors who they are are just empowered by
5:36
learning the stories of what happened to them.
5:38
And part of the big, big piece of why that was so healing for
5:42
her, it was because she realized that what happened, what he did
5:47
to her was not her fault. All of the things that he did to
5:50
manipulate and groom her were calculated and knew that she
5:55
would fall for it and was a very calculated plan, which is what
5:59
perpetrators do. And she also got to see how he
6:04
did that same thing to other people so that she had no power
6:07
in that she was 22 years old and he was in his 40s and she had no
6:12
place. She, she was, you know, the 22
6:15
year old living in New York and he was a billionaire living also
6:19
in New York, but in this palace on Madison Ave.
6:22
I think is where he lives. I don't know.
6:24
But anyway, so now we're seeing in all these drops the Epstein
6:29
files of how many times survivors reported starting in
6:33
the 90s and the early 2000s and how the FBI and how the
6:37
Department of Justice did not help them and how they're still
6:41
in 2026 covering up for powerful men and powerful women.
6:48
And how the survivors never had a collective voice.
6:51
And now that they have a collective voice, they're
6:54
starting to make cracks. But look at how hard it is for
6:57
them. Look at the threats that they're
6:59
experiencing. Look at the gas lighting that
7:01
they're being experienced and that it's happening on college
7:06
campuses, it's happening at institutions, it's happening at
7:09
churches in the Catholic Church and all the different types of
7:12
churches. It's happening in workplaces.
7:16
And that exact same thing that you're seeing at the Epstein,
7:19
the Epstein files are in the Epstein network in this, this
7:25
sex trafficking ring is just a description of what's happening
7:32
everywhere. And I can say that because I
7:33
have worked with survivors and perpetrators of sexual violence
7:37
for 25 years. So I know how these systems work
7:39
in more of a microcosm and more of a local thing.
7:42
And the local DA office is just as corrupt as the Department of
7:45
Justice in so many different times.
7:48
Yeah. So framing it that way, I kind
7:51
of want to talk about how does Callisto be a solution?
7:53
Because I came to, I came to Callisto 4 years ago because I
7:57
believed after all the time working with survivors and
8:00
perpetrators, that this is actually a solution in how to
8:04
change systems to help survivors and to hold perpetrators
8:07
accountable. Because we have to take it out
8:09
of these systems that they're not broken.
8:11
They're working exactly how the people in power want them to
8:14
work and want them to cover those.
8:16
They're not broken systems. They're, they're designed to
8:19
keep survivors silent, which is why they are not working for
8:22
survivors. And not only are they not
8:24
working for survivors, they're also very traumatic and create
8:27
more trauma for survivors. So given all of this of why
8:32
survivors don't report and how few of survivors report, we have
8:35
created this encrypted system that right now anybody with
8:40
a.edu e-mail address in the US and its territories can use for
8:44
free. And what our system does is that
8:48
if you have that.edu e-mail address, you create an account,
8:52
then you enter into matching. If you want to find out if your
8:54
perpetrators harm somebody else, it's fairly simple.
8:58
You put in the state where the assault occurred.
9:00
And that's because sexual assault laws vary by state.
9:04
And so we want to make sure to get you the information
9:06
possible. Then you put in a unique
9:09
identifier of your perpetrator and that's what we used to match
9:12
on. So that is your perpetrator,
9:14
social media handles, e-mail address, phone number, there's
9:17
about 12 different things that you can put in and you put in as
9:20
many as you know. And that's what we used to match
9:22
on. So for example, if two people
9:25
put in the same Instagram handle of a person, there's going to be
9:28
a match. It is not like a dating site.
9:31
You're not going to know right away.
9:32
And all of this information is end to end encrypted.
9:35
So it's encrypted before it hits our servers.
9:37
So until there's a match, nobody can see anything.
9:40
They can't see information about the perpetrators or the
9:42
survivors. When a match happens, we assign
9:45
that case to a confidential survivor advocate who reaches
9:49
out to the the survivor separately and says there's been
9:53
a match. Did you want to meet?
9:55
It is the choice of survivors that they want to meet with that
9:58
advocate. If they choose to meet with that
10:00
advocate, then they will say what happened to them for the
10:02
first time and that advocate will help them with their
10:05
options. So what are your legal options?
10:07
Whether it be criminal law, civil law, Title 9, whatever the
10:10
case may be. Also, what are your mental
10:12
health options? How can you get connected with
10:14
other survivors, even not of the same perpetrator, but how can
10:17
you get the help that you need? Then, if it's safe to do so,
10:20
after going through the risks and the survivor's consent, that
10:23
advocate will work at connecting the survivors to pursue healing
10:26
and justice, whatever that means for them.
10:29
So we are not a database that people can sort through.
10:32
We are not a warning system. We do not investigate what
10:35
happens and we do not report to police Title 9 or HR.
10:41
We are really about empowering those survivors because we know
10:44
that if we empower those survivors to make decisions,
10:47
we've already seen that survivors are more likely to
10:50
report that to the authorities. And we've seen with the Me Too
10:54
movement that when multiple survivors report at the same
10:57
time their strength in numbers, they're more believable, they're
11:00
harder to ignore, and there's more likely to be accountability
11:04
with those perpetrators. And eventually, we can change
11:08
these systems and recreate these systems with data that we do not
11:12
have right now across these systems.
11:16
And so I'm going to pause right there.
11:18
That's a lot of information. Yes, I that's a lot of
11:21
information. I want to, I have a question
11:23
about the advocates. How were they chosen?
11:27
How were they? What is the process of deciding
11:31
that they can be this for these survivors?
11:36
Yeah. So we are working with an
11:39
organization called Ampersand Advocacy Resources and they have
11:45
folks that have been doing this work for 10 plus years or more
11:50
decades worth of experience working with survivors, working
11:55
as advocates for survivors. And so they really provide these
11:59
services for them and they can, they're, they're helping us
12:03
design this program more and more because Cluster doesn't
12:07
exist anywhere else. Like there's no other
12:10
organization or company that is successfully matching survivors
12:14
in this way that is trauma informed and survivor centric.
12:17
We are all about the survivors first.
12:21
And so we wanted to work with people that are already doing
12:24
these advocacy resources and and have the capacity to help these
12:28
survivors in that way. Yeah, I think that's because
12:31
trust is such a big issue in this of like, who can I trust?
12:37
And there's so much fear that goes into it.
12:40
So, you know, so important that this organization has been
12:44
vetted by you, that they have vetted these and and and and how
12:48
they got the connection. What going back farther than
12:53
this is before you came on board.
12:55
But what sparked the idea that, wait a minute, we know there's
13:01
power in numbers. We know that if we can create a
13:06
system where they can report, this happened to me.
13:10
Because we also know that perpetrators don't most of the
13:16
time perpetrate one time. It tends to be some, especially
13:20
the way the system's set up, they get away with it.
13:24
No one calls them out on it. And there's so many stigmas
13:28
around still to this day. Drives me crazy.
13:32
And I have three daughters, and I remember having these
13:34
conversations with them that you are not responsible for anybody
13:40
doing anything inappropriate to you.
13:42
It does not matter how you dressed.
13:44
It does not matter how much you've had to drink.
13:46
It does not, you know, whatever the case is, all these things
13:49
that come up, especially on college campuses is your you're
13:54
figuring out how the world operates and where you fit into
13:57
it and how to socialize and what's safe and not safe.
14:00
There's so much you don't know. But what was kind of the
14:02
brainchild like, hold on a minute.
14:04
We know historically, because individual survivors get
14:10
absolutely re traumatized and accosted and abused continually
14:15
through these terribly horrible systems that aren't built for
14:19
them. But if there's enough people,
14:21
then all of a sudden it's like, oh, wait a minute, one might
14:24
have been lying, which we have. There's numbers out there.
14:26
It's I, I you probably know this better than me.
14:29
It's something between 93 and 98% of the people that report
14:34
are telling the truth. Like, it's yeah, it's such a
14:37
small number, but yet we still have these stigmas and
14:39
stereotypes. But what was the what was the
14:41
kind of like, hold on a minute, we can do something here?
14:45
Yeah, so just Ladd is our founder and she is a survivor of
14:50
sexual assault on a college campus.
14:52
And she reported to Title 9 and it didn't go well.
14:55
And she was building technology to help with sexual health in
14:58
general. And so in 2013 / 10 years ago,
15:03
she had this idea. And it came from the fact that
15:05
she did a bunch of research of sexual assault on college
15:09
campuses and she found that 90% of of sexual assault on college
15:13
campuses are committed by serial perpetrators who on average
15:16
offend 6 times while in college. And so she was like, how do we
15:22
get these six together? How do we prevent campus sexual
15:25
assault? Because if you can get 2
15:27
survivors together who are more likely to be believed, then
15:31
you'll stop sexual assault after 2 versus 6, which 2 is too many,
15:36
1 is too many. But if we can get to that now,
15:39
we can reduce college sexual assault by 59%.
15:42
So she thought about all of her experiences and like, we need it
15:46
completely secure. We need it completely encrypted
15:48
where people cannot hack into it.
15:50
We need it completely kept under confidentiality.
15:53
And this, this idea of privacy enhancing technology where
15:56
everything's private until there's a match.
15:58
And even after there's a match, our system keeps it covered
16:02
under confidentiality, right and protects it as much as possible
16:06
by based on state to state laws under confidentiality.
16:10
And the survivors are informed of that before they even enter
16:12
in. So that is really what her idea
16:16
was. But think about that.
16:17
That was 2013. That was four to five years
16:19
before Me Too happened. And I think that when Me Too
16:23
hit, it just showed how how many survivors had reported Harvey
16:28
Weinstein. Rowena Chu is somebody that was
16:30
in that first article about Harvey Weinstein.
16:33
And she wasn't named in that article because she was still
16:36
anonymous and she talked off the record.
16:37
But she's on our board of directors because she believes
16:40
in the power of Callisto based on her experiences.
16:43
So you think about, you know, when me too hit, you saw famous
16:48
and powerful men fall because not that the systems didn't
16:53
know. The systems knew survivors were
16:56
reporting. Survivors were talking about it.
16:58
Weinstein was a quote, UN quote open secret in Hollywood.
17:01
It was because we knew, and we knew because survivors felt
17:06
comfortable and safe coming forward for the first time.
17:10
And that was the difference, you know, so, so Jess's hypothesis
17:15
was right, and we saw that. And me too.
17:19
You think about Larry Nassar, who was the USA Gymnastics
17:22
doctor. He was reported in 96 into 97
17:26
into the early 2000s numerous times.
17:28
He was reported to Michigan State.
17:29
He was reported to East Lansing Police Department and every time
17:34
they closed the case because they believed him, because he
17:37
was an outgoing, friendly guy that said that he did all of
17:40
these things under the guise of medical care, which was not
17:43
true. And they didn't investigate any
17:45
further and they closed the case.
17:46
So when the next person reported, there was no open case
17:49
and there was no there. There was no reports and there
17:52
was nothing to go back to because that was closed.
17:55
And that is by design. Everybody thinks that sexual
17:59
assault reporting looks like an episode of Law and Order SVU
18:03
where, you know, these are particularly heinous crimes and
18:08
that's not how they're treated at all.
18:11
You know, there is not somebody with a computer that has access
18:14
to all these systems that are interconnected and state by
18:16
state databases. That doesn't actually happen.
18:19
And the times that it does happen, people don't have access
18:22
to that or the resources to even do it.
18:24
Even the best people in the systems are still working with
18:28
systems that don't want to connect.
18:30
And so we have this like, myth in society about what it's going
18:34
to look like and what our criminal justice system does,
18:37
and it does not happen. And I mean, one other example of
18:40
that is that I know numerous cases in numerous different
18:44
jurisdictions of people having video evidence or text message
18:49
evidence or both. And they take the case, they go
18:52
to the police, they file a police report.
18:55
The police investigated. It goes to the DA's office and
18:58
the District Attorney, the DA looks at that case and says, I
19:01
don't think a jury will convict this person.
19:04
So we're not going to prosecute. We're not going to press
19:07
charges. The survivor cannot press
19:09
charges. The District Attorney presses
19:11
charges. And so if that District Attorney
19:13
decides, no, I don't want to or they're paid off, like in the
19:17
case of Weinstein in New York, that doesn't go go anywhere.
19:22
Yeah, yeah. And that's so key.
19:23
And I want to also talk about the fact that, you know, back in
19:26
2006, Tarana Burke initially. Just.
19:30
Put me to out there but it took years and a massive amount of
19:35
women and I will say a lot of white women because black women
19:40
stories in this are tragically dismissed even at a higher
19:44
level. But it took all those years
19:47
later of all of these people coming forward, going back to,
19:51
to, to Callisto's belief that if we can help these victims report
19:58
and connect and let people know this perpetrator is out there,
20:02
we together collectively can make a difference.
20:05
That's the message we're sending.
20:08
We have a lot of work to create a safe world where we're just
20:11
believe survivors for God's sakes.
20:13
I mean, it's insanity. We've seen this play out on TV
20:17
sets over and over again. You look at, you know, Supreme
20:20
Court justices, 2 of them that we have on our freaking Supreme
20:25
Court right now. The women that came forward and
20:28
spoke about the atrocities that were done to them were treated
20:32
like they were the problem. And these powerful men sit on
20:35
the Supreme Court today. I mean, it's just mad that mean
20:39
to me and so the. And that happens at local levels
20:43
where we're judging their communities and it and it
20:46
happens like I know so many cases like that.
20:49
And so that is the one that we got to see.
20:52
Because. Of the creator wealth.
20:54
That's the other thing, is that we get to see Epstein after
20:57
years and decades and decades. We got to see Weinstein after
21:00
decades because they had power and people wanted to know them
21:04
and the journalists wanted to report them, right?
21:06
And it was a story that would sell.
21:09
We at Calista are dealing with the stories that people don't
21:12
care about unless they're an athlete that's making money for
21:16
the school. People don't care about the the
21:18
random perpetrator on a college campus.
21:20
Like journalists don't care about that until you get the
21:23
numbers. But how are you?
21:25
How are you getting the the survivors to come together to
21:27
even know that they're not the only one?
21:30
And so we are trying to help people that are watching these
21:35
Epstein files drop and they're watching the the DOJ respond and
21:41
they're watching the survivors speak.
21:43
And they may not even put it together, but if they're
21:46
survivors, it's hitting them, it's making them angry.
21:49
Like you sat at the top of the show and it's having these
21:52
feelings. And what some are connecting and
21:54
what some are not connecting is that it's because it's exactly
21:58
what they experienced in their local communities.
22:02
It is no different. It is just at a bigger level.
22:07
That's the only thing that has changed.
22:11
Yeah, it's. You know, a guest that we had on
22:13
a few weeks ago, Jodi Baumgarten.
22:16
She's done a lot of. Of.
22:17
Advocacy work over the years for women.
22:20
She created a a sports doll many years ago that represented what
22:29
girls actually look like. She's she's advised in DC.
22:32
She's, you know, she wrote on her sub sack the other day about
22:37
this isn't that things are getting people are like, oh,
22:43
things keep getting worse. She's like, they've been worse
22:45
for 35 years, 40 years, 50 years, six years.
22:49
We're just. Seeing them, we're just.
22:50
Exactly she that's exactly her title of it is like it's not
22:53
getting worse. You're just seeing it now and
22:57
and I will give. Oh, go ahead.
22:58
And then I'll. Yeah, it's like, well, yeah,
22:59
it's like, so how do we get to this point?
23:01
It's like we don't why don't why in the hell?
23:04
And I said hell did it hesitate these years?
23:08
I mean it it and it's the way it goes back to what you said.
23:11
I was listening to a podcast yesterday and I'm going to put
23:14
the link to it in the show notes where they were.
23:16
She is giving a history on Epstein and how he got started
23:22
and how the southern, the court district in South Florida just
23:27
completely enabled him to get away with this for years and
23:32
years and years with very high profile names that if you pay
23:36
attention in the world, you're going to recognize.
23:38
And so it's no wonder that the the people that have been abused
23:46
feel so like I have no chance. And that's why it's so important
23:50
that your organization exists. It was founded by someone who
23:54
had been there. So she's got the empathy, she's
23:58
got the understanding, she's got the wisdom, she's got the care
24:02
for the confidentiality, to making sure you're being heard
24:06
and tended to by people who you can trust.
24:09
I mean, I think it's really important.
24:11
And this is for anyone who has experienced sexual assault, man,
24:17
woman, non binary across the board.
24:21
This is a place for you. So, well, you know, my platform
24:24
is known for featuring women and we know the numbers about women.
24:28
It's for everyone. If you have been sexually
24:30
assaulted, Callisto is for you. Yeah, absolutely.
24:35
And I mean, I think that that is key because like you said
24:37
earlier, it does impact women of color, LGBTQ folks, people with
24:43
disabilities, people who are international students and are
24:48
here on a visa. They're not going to report
24:49
because they're not going to want to lose their visa,
24:51
particularly right now in 2026. And so they might not go report
24:56
because they don't feel safe, but maybe they could help
24:59
somebody else report who has been assaulted by somebody, by
25:02
the same person. And we have matches.
25:05
And the other thing it says about our system is that it
25:08
doesn't matter who the perpetrator is.
25:10
The perpetrator does not have to be connected to the college.
25:12
And it it connects survivors. We've got several coast to coast
25:17
matches where one survivor lives on one coast and one survivor
25:21
lives on the other coast. And that means the perpetrator
25:23
has moved or the survivor has moved.
25:26
But we know that survivors often question because of society,
25:32
because of all of the stuff of the the question am I did that
25:36
happen? Is it my fault?
25:38
I should have known better. I should have done all of these
25:40
things. The should, the should, the
25:41
should, should. And what I always say is that
25:44
like, you're not responsible for what happened to you.
25:47
The only person that's responsible is the perpetrator.
25:49
But there's so much confusion around even the most well
25:54
meaning things of like safety lists.
25:57
Oh, we want to have a safety list for women and it is, you
26:01
know, cover your drink. Don't run at night.
26:04
Don't, you know, be do the buddy system and, you know, don't
26:08
drink too much. Don't do all these things.
26:10
So when you do, when you do drink too much, when you didn't
26:12
cover your drink, what's your first thing?
26:14
Oh, it was my fault. I didn't cover my drink.
26:16
I, I drink too much. So I am what's wrong?
26:20
No, the the safety list should be don't let your friend rape.
26:24
Yeah, let's. The safety list should be let's.
26:26
Teach. Our children when they're very
26:29
small, that this is a horrible, awful thing to do and you should
26:32
never do it to another human. Let's do that.
26:35
I mean, I mean the message and it starts with all these little
26:38
messages that we send little boys and little girls and non
26:42
binary children when they're very young about how they're
26:46
supposed to, what's acceptable, what you can't do, whose
26:49
responsibility it is. Let's make each child
26:52
accountable for themselves to know what's right and honorable
26:57
and what is not. I mean, and, and do we
27:01
inflecting any kind of control or power or any to where there's
27:05
a miss? That's not OK.
27:07
That's not how we treat and interact with other humans, no
27:11
matter what. I mean, I think that, you know,
27:14
we just have such a misguided idea.
27:17
And so we end up with these systems that we have today.
27:20
We're getting close to the end here.
27:22
So I wanted to talk to us about where the dollars go like we
27:26
talked about really in general how the system work when some
27:29
when I go on and I click and I give $100 to Callisto what what
27:35
cost are involved, what does that pay for?
27:38
Yeah, it pays for us to build the tech in house.
27:41
It pays for us to get people to know about it.
27:45
And that's a huge thing too. You know, we're we're trying to
27:49
do the network effect because the more people that know about
27:52
Calisto, the more people who are going to use it, the more
27:55
matches we're going to have, the more people we can help.
27:57
And, you know, so it gets better the more people that know about
28:01
it. But people don't want to follow
28:02
stuff about sexual assault. They don't know to look up this
28:05
stuff. It's not something that, you
28:07
know, anybody really wants to follow an Instagram page on
28:10
sexual assault. So we rely on Calista
28:12
ambassadors, which are students who are volunteers.
28:15
And so we have a program for that that that we invest in so
28:18
we can give students like the brochures and the things that
28:21
are needed to spread the word on their campus.
28:23
And so that's what $100 will pay for is, is to do that and to pay
28:27
for social media marketing costs that you know might not be
28:31
glamorous, but are absolutely necessary for everybody to know
28:35
about Calisto. OK.
28:37
And I think that with. Go ahead, go ahead.
28:40
Well, and I think that that the difficult thing, and you can see
28:43
this now too, is that powerful wealthy people are caught up in
28:47
these, in these Epstein files, right?
28:49
Those are the people who could be donating to us.
28:51
Those are the people who own foundations and run foundations
28:54
that we cannot get money from because one, we are so new.
28:58
This technology is still so new that people want to understand
29:03
it and they don't always understand why we need it or
29:05
exactly how it works because it's not a good sound bite,
29:08
right? We are doing something
29:09
completely innovative and a lot of foundations are wanting the
29:13
like, what works and what really, you know, what is known
29:16
to be true. And if, if you're looking at
29:23
these, the, the, how the Epstein files are, are happening and
29:26
all, all of this stuff right now, Can you imagine if any of
29:29
those people put their name on an organization like Callisto
29:31
for a sponsorship? There's so many questions and so
29:34
much PR backlash. So they would rather just avoid
29:37
it. Whether they, the amount of
29:39
times we get, it's a great 'cause well it's not for us
29:41
though, whether that's a foundation or an individual
29:44
donor. And so we rely on 5/10/15 dollar
29:48
donations. We also would love thousand and
29:50
$100,000 donations and we have several $100,000 donors and
29:55
Arnold Ventures is a great partner of ours that has a
29:59
foundation that will take the risk on us.
30:01
Sure, sure. But the, hey, $1,000,000 donors,
30:04
if you're out there, they're open the doors open Tracy's.
30:08
Hazard talk to you. So how if you're a call, if
30:11
you're listening, you are an administrator on a college
30:14
campus and you're like, oh. I would, I'd love to.
30:16
Have some How do you How do people contact you to get you
30:20
engaged on their campus? Yeah.
30:23
So you can either go to ourwebsite@projectclisto.org and
30:27
there's a couple forms that you can fill out.
30:29
There's an online toolkit for free that you can use to just
30:32
spread the word. You can also contact us at
30:34
contact@projectcalisto.org. We answer all of the emails and
30:38
we have some of our staff that are absolutely going to reach
30:42
out to you and and help you through that process.
30:45
So we want to make that as easy as possible.
30:47
Let's say you're an individual student and you just want to be
30:50
an advocate on your campus. Regardless of whether
30:52
administrators can they do that as well.
30:55
Absolutely. You can go to our, either you
30:57
can contact us at contact at projectclisto.org or you can go
31:01
on our website and there's a How to get involved page.
31:03
And one of those things is to become a Calisto ambassador.
31:06
And that is how you can, there's an application in there that you
31:10
can sign up for and to spread the word on your campus.
31:13
We'll give you training, we'll give you the brochures and
31:15
everything that it is that you need to spread the word on your
31:18
campus. OK, such an empowering tool to
31:22
give to people to like, I can do something about this, especially
31:29
if you know, you know something. And I, I shared this with you
31:33
and I know we're winding down, but something that I have been
31:35
so passionate about this since I was very young.
31:38
I had a friend in high school that experienced this at a
31:43
horrible level and in her own family system and watching how
31:49
it was navigated and what she had to go through and what she
31:53
carried was it just made me angry.
31:56
I watched a church system. I grew up in the Mormon church.
32:00
I watched them protect an abusive man who was abusing his
32:05
own daughter and other people within it and watched the
32:09
people, including, you know, boys that knew about it, that
32:13
were her friend that she would try to tried to report.
32:16
And I watched him be protected. And it was the most disgusting,
32:21
horrifying thing that I just remember that these it's
32:25
everywhere. And and it's the problem is it's
32:28
just like you said, the system isn't broken.
32:30
It was built for these powerful people, patriarchal systems.
32:35
I'm just going to say it in place.
32:38
And, and, and so we have to come up with creative ways as we
32:42
continue to work to break these systems down and blow these
32:45
systems up and make them safe so that we're no longer living in
32:50
the world that we live in right now.
32:51
But as we are, we know that numbers count and we know the
32:55
volume together matters and we know that we must give
32:59
resources. So thank you so much for being
33:03
with me today for the important work you do.
33:07
I this is going to be go to our website on the resources page to
33:12
get all this information about Calisto.
33:15
And you can listen to my episode with Tracy back in September to
33:19
learn more about her and her background and how she got
33:22
connected with Calisto. There's so many ways you can
33:25
connect with this organization, from being a student to a
33:30
millionaire, a billionaire, everywhere in between.
33:32
But find a way, let people other know, other people know.
33:37
And let's change this trajectory for survivors and put them in
33:41
the seat of empowerment and and safety.
33:46
I I just. I'm so passionate about this and
33:49
I'm so thankful. For.
33:51
Importantly, massively brave people that do this work every
33:57
single day. And if you are a survivor out
34:00
there listening, go to Callisto. Now we talked about earlier,
34:05
Tracy, one last question. You guys work specifically on
34:09
with college campuses and we know this is a big Can other
34:12
people outside of that still reach out to you and can you
34:16
refer them out to sources even if they aren't on a college
34:20
campus? We do have some other resources
34:23
on our page. We, we, we do typically help
34:28
people as much as possible. We don't have a huge capacity
34:30
for that. However, what I will say is what
34:34
we are looking to expand, and so we are actively pursuing funding
34:39
to be able to expand beyond college campuses.
34:41
It wouldn't be fully open yet to the public, but working with
34:45
unions and membership organizations to get their
34:48
members access. So that's also a way that we can
34:50
reach out, but there are definitely resources on our
34:53
website that people can find. And that also adds an
34:56
exclamation point of why your dollars are so important for
34:59
this organization. So this can be available to
35:02
anyone, anywhere that needs this support.
35:05
Tracy, thank you so much for what you do.
35:08
Go to projectcallisto.org to support.
35:13
Did I get that right? Yes, project listed hour.
35:17
Projectcallisto.org to learn more, to find out how you can
35:21
support to become advocate for an ambassador for a donor to to
35:28
let share it across your platforms far and wide.
35:31
So thankful to be able to to feature this massively important
35:35
resource as part of podcasts on 2026 listeners.
35:39
Thanks so much for being with us.
35:41
This information is in the show notes.
35:43
It's on our resources page at embracinglayers.com.
35:47
If you're driving along or running or whatever you're
35:49
doing, you're at work, you don't have a place to write it down.
35:51
It's OK, It's all there. Thanks so much for listening.
35:55
We've just given you a ton of resources.
35:57
Let's go out and make this a safe place in the world for
36:03
survivors. And let's really long term, I
36:06
know it sounds Pollyannish, but let's raise our kids in a way
36:09
that we no longer have survivors because we no longer.
36:12
Have sexual assault? And but for now, as we do, we've
36:16
got these great resources. Go utilize them, share them
36:20
across the board. Tracy, take good care.
36:23
Thanks so much for being with me today.
36:26
Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely.
36:28
All right, listeners, you know, you know the assignment, go
36:31
check it out. Take good care, be safe, know
36:36
that you're worthy, that you're valuable and you get to choose.
36:41
We'll see you next time on the Field podcast.